*Conditions Apply

About the Author: Shobhana Kumar’s first volume of poetry, The Voices Never Stop, was published by Writers Workshop, India, in 2012. Her poems have appeared in several journals in India, Canada, USA and UK and in anthologies like The Dance of the Peacock – An Anthology of English Poetry from India, edited by Dr Vivekanand Jha and Suvarnarekha – An Anthology of Indian Women Poets Writing in English, edited by Dr Nandini Sahu. She has authored five books of non-fiction, including Coimbatore: The Emerging Indian Cosmopolis, SIMA – A Journey through 75 Years, which is a detailed study of the textile industry with a specific focus on south India and Dr. P. C. Thomas in Conversation with Shobhana Kumar. Shobhana holds an MBA and, when she is not writing, she works as an advertising consultant, communications trainer and storyteller. She also runs Small Differences, with her husband, C. G. Kumar, an NGO that uses storytelling and other creative art forms to empower disadvantaged children and rehabilitate old, abandoned people in safe and healthy environments.

Shobhana and her husband live in Coimbatore with their two children.

Teaser:

an elegy for remembrance

for how long will you remember me? gone as i am already from the pages of your newspapers and headlines on your television

you will remember me of course, in fleeting glimpses when another like me is molested, another girl child, drowned, a mother’s foetus ripped lest she births her own kind, a bride’s cries stifled, or set afire.

you will remember when my tormentors are brought to book, when they are hanged or sentenced to life, if ever. when governments swear by their children and their mothers to never let this happen, only to play witness again and again. you will eulogize me when you light candles in my memory year after year.

but you will also forget in the mundaneness of your life in the everyday struggles you must meet in order to survive

you will forget when you see beauty around you happiness, joy and innocence and you will then foolishly believe that life is still beautiful. and that there is still hope. you will forget because it is scary to remember.

how many more of us will it take for you to not just remember but never forget?